5. “It's like WIRED's fantasy dinner party having access to
the talents of Scott Harrison, Jonah Peretti, Nancy
Lublin and so many other creative thinkers. ’On! The
Future of Now' is a brilliant opportunity to understand
how technology is changing our world, explained by the
very people leading that revolution."
- David Rowan, Editor, WIRED magazine
6. WHEN TECHNOLOGY &
HUMANS UNITE
Cortana, xbox kinect voice, visual gestures that learn and start to
understand our every need. Understanding context, location. In a
mobile first, cloud first world – high value services will become far
more advanced and the data analytics and Artificial Intelligence
developing at an ever increasing rate.
8. THE HUMAN
OPERATING SYSTEM
“As more of our interactions move into the digital realm, we can
easily find ourselves hiding from the complexities of social
relationships behind the narrow field of view of technology.”
Aaron Ballick
9. BEING PRESENT?
“If the end of the twentieth century can be characterized by
futurism, the twenty-first can be defined by presentism.”
Douglas Rushkoff
author and media theorist
10. THE FIGHT FOR OUR
ATTENTION
“As content has grown increasingly abundant and i
mmediately available, attention becomes the
limiting factor in the consumption of information.”
Craig Hepburn – Author of chapter 7!
11. USE TECHNOLOGY, DON’T
LET IT USE YOU
‘Liking’ someone status that talks about us needing to be open
and honest with each other, doesn’t count as us being open and
honest with each other.” Jefferson Bethke
We have shortchanged our future for immediate gratification! –
Toby Daniels
Good morning, thank you for introduction Caroline.
First thing I want to do is ask you a question: How many people on the planet are connected to each other through the Internet, social media and mobile technology in 2014?
The answer is almost 3B, roughly half of the world’s population.
However, by 2022, this number will double to 6B, with many of those people connecting for the first time in Africa, Asia and parts of Latin America.
Today I am here to talk to you about what this means today and in the future, with the aim of sharing stories, insights, anecdotes that will give you an alternative perspective on how our lives and our work is being impacted by our increasingly connected society.
Look at the technology – the sharing, the capture of a ‘moment’, the re-living afterwards, the sharing…..and this change means only one thing…..
11 petabytes of storage was used for Facebook's "Look Back" videos
Facebook users have uploaded 240 billion photos
Facebook users upload 350 million photos daily
Facebook users share an avg of 4.75 billion items daily
Our reference material today is this. Our soon to publish book ON! The Future of Now: Making Sense of Our Always On, Always Connected World.
The book has been published in partnership with Social Media Week and Nokia and is made up of a collection of essays and personal stories from leading thinkers such as author Seth Godin, media theorist Douglas Rushkoff, founder and CEO of BuzzFeed Jonah Peretti and founder of Zipcar Robin Chase who was one of the pioneering innovators in the collaborative consumption movement.
The aim of the book is to provide insights into how social media and technology has impacted the contributors lives and their work and for the purposes of this talk I am going to share some of the most important themes that emerged from the book’s content.
Over the course of the next 20minsI am going to present some key themes of the book with some example stories.
A lonely writer develops an unlikely relationship with his newly purchased operating system that's designed to meet his every need.
Cortana, xbox one voice, visual gestures that learn and start to understand our every need. Understanding context, location. IN a mobile first, cloud first world – services will become far more advanced and the data analytics and AI developing at an ever increasing rate.
Example – anniversary approaching, suggests some gifts based on insights and social data, provides some options. Purchases the gift, sends to wife.
One of our contributors Brooke Hammerling, who is deeply rooted into the Silicon Valley startup world, tells tells a story where she was able to share an intimate experience with a little girl in Ethiopia, while on a trip to Africa. The girl didn’t speak any English but they were able to connect when Brooke showed the girl how to play a game on her smartphone.
When some people probably would have chided her for even carrying her mobile phone with her on a trip, playing a game on a cellphone and sharing in the experience allowed her to make a real human connection.
Find trusted professionals to help with your household tasks.
We are seeing these new forms of human connection happen in so many places- platforms like AirBnB and TaskRabbit where people who are brought together by technology are forming really meaningful connections. In Leah Busque’s chapter she tells the story of an unlikely friendship that formed between two mom’s on TaskRabbit.
A mother living in San Francisco was unable to be with her 20 year old son who was undergoing cancer treatments at a hospital in Massachusetts. As a librarian, she couldn’t afford to be with him for all of his treatments so she used TaskRabbit to find someone she was able to bring her son meals, sit with him and give her updates about his condition. The TaskRabbit who picked up this job was also a mother and through this ordeal, they formed a strong bond. Stories like this help us to see the potential for technology to create powerful connections between people and to hope for a better and more connected future.
First, we begin by exploring technology and our brains. Author, Dr. Aaron Balick, a integrative psychotherapist explores what he calls the Human Being Operating System (HBOS), which is the software within our own brains that allows for the creation of the kinds of technologies that surround us today. Because we are social creatures, it makes sense that much of our technology has been developed to manage our complex social relationships: Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn etc.
Ballick explains however that the narrow apertures of our technologies do not allow us to experience the fullness of human interaction, like eye contact, touch and tone. As more of our interactions move into the virtual realm, we can easily find ourselves hiding from the complexities of social relationships behind the narrow field of view of technology.
Doug Rushkoff, the author of Present Shock and Program or Be Programmed examines our shifting society, in “This is the new now.”, which is empowered and accelerated by technology.
With words like “real-time” defining everything from our television programming to the merchandise available in flash sales retailers, Rushkoff illustrates the ways that we are moving into the age of “now”.
In this new present, technology has eliminated much of the need to use our brains for information storage, in hopes that the resulting capacity of the mind could be used to solve the world’s many problems. But how do we really spend this excess brain capacity? Are we continuing in the tradition of innovators or are we impulsively responding to every new post or push notification on our mobile devices?
Rushkoff argues that we need to seek the bigger picture and spend some time disengaging from addictive nature “Now” and instead engage more in the larger question of how technology might be eroding our personal relationships are our ability to be truly present.
Today’s generation increasingly expects that important news will find them. The Sunday paper is becoming a thing of the past and the articles of influence are the ones that are most shared across Facebook and Twitter. And now that we aren’t too interested in paying newspaper editors to curate good content for us, how do we decide what’s important?
However, we do need to be careful that we are in fact using technology to add meaning to our lives. Through social media, we can reunite with long-lost neighbors and friends, but sometimes our constant connection can prevent us from connecting with those who are right beside us.
Stimulating conversations, a nuanced aspect to someones body language or the way someone might communicate using eye contact can sometimes be lost when we try to multi-task in social situations.
Working with Michael Johnson - Identifying future talent through data and social insights.
Andy Murray and his team has approached me to discuss how they can create the first truly connected athlete. Live streaming heart rate, blood pressure, stress levels, trainign regime to a mobile app for fans.
Power Your Voice, mPowering Action's flagship program, is designed to demonstrate and raise awareness around global sustainable development initiatives through sports and entertainment during the official World Cup year. The program will focus on access to energy and its link to education, healthcare, and poverty in developing nations and nations recovering from the destruction of natural disasters.
